(Special thanks go out to Victoria Sears Goldman for inspiring part of this posts title)
So I know this guy, let's call him Jed. No, not that ignorant backwoods hillbilly who hit it big and still lived with his mom, his daughter and their inbred nephew. Not that guy from the hills of Tennessee.
Actually his real name (the guy I know and not Buddy Ebsen) is not really Jed but to protect the innocent I have changed his name for our purpose of discussion here.
Now you need to understand that I am really concerned about Jed. He has a bit of belly on him (probably from all the restaurants and deli's he loves to frequent), a bad wheel (from what I don't know, probably sitting too much) and on top of that he doesn't really work too hard when he is at the gym unless he is being pushed, poked and prodded by his buddy who for the ease of the storyline we will call Jethro.
Normally I wouldn't make someone else’s personal health (which is really their personal business) a concern of mine but just like Vinnie, my buddy Jerry and a whole bunch of other people I like to hang out with, Jed is a really good guy.
Anyway, part of Jed's routine, aside from not working out with too much oomph (I guess he is pacing himself), is that Jed loves to talk. That is how I know about all those Deli's and restaurants. But this time Jed wanted to talk about something different and it wasn't black gold or Texas T.
Jed had just seen the movie "The Social Network" (probably over a giant bucket of buttered popcorn, a "medium" sized drink and a box of jujyfruits). His synopsis was it was a great film worth seeing and that while Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook and the person whom the film is about) was a genius he was also a big jerk too.
Now far be it for me argue about a movie I have never seen let alone to play a leaner, harder, more fit version of Ebert to Ted's overweight and still breathing version of Siskel, but I have bit of an issue with that summation of the film.
I don't know Mark Zuckerberg, not one bit all as I am sure my buddy Jed doesn't either. Maybe he (Zuckerberg and not Jed) really is a socially retarded bag of puss or maybe he is a pretty good guy. I just don't know and I am sure a lot of people out there with some pretty strong opinions on him don't have any real answer either.
I went and researched the film and did not find it to be Mark Zuckerberg "approved" despite the fact it is supposed to depict a pretty decently important chunk of his life.
http://fincherfanatic.blogspot.com/2010/10/mark-zuckerbergs-opinion-on-social.html
What I did find is that it seems a lot of the contributors to the film didn't really like Mr. Zuckerberg very much and that is an important little factoid because it forms the basis of my pontification today.
Mark Zuckerberg had a film made about him whose primary sources came from people who either didn’t know him very well or didn’t really like him. The fact the film was called the Social Network tells me right away that Mark Zuckerberg cannot be all that bad of a dude.
Listen, if you took all my jilted ex -girlfriends (which is basically what disgruntled business partners are) and a bunch of other people who don’t know me that well, and you got them together and had them write a film about me you wouldn’t get something as benign as “The Social Network”. It would be more like “The Giant Douchebag”.
And that is exactly why not only I, but everyone out there should have such an issue with my buddy Jed’s opinion of Mr. Zuckerberg. It never seems to fail that the further we get away from the original source of the information (think really “religious” people who “hate fags” and fly planes into buildings) the more distorted and incorrect the outcomes usually become.
There is no better example of this than with the “cheat day”.
Cheat Day Exposed
To understand the concept of a Cheat Day you need to go back to its origins. Nobody really knows where the idea of the Cheat Day really began. Think of it as the culinary version of the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa’s body.
What is for sure is that some time ago a bunch of bodybuilders got together and tried to figure a way out a predicament they were in. As they got ready for their show it became harder and harder to maintain not only their sanity (single digit body fat levels and wearing those banana hammock’s will do that to you) but also their metabolisms. You see as your body gets closer and closer to and beyond its natural limits of leanness (please understand this natural limit varies tremendously for everybody just like shoe sizes) a lot of crazy things happen to it chemically.
Not only does your brain begin to center and focus all your attention completely around food making you annoying and irritable but your bodies fat burning systems began to down regulate as does your metabolism. This is all in a last ditch effort to deal with what your body considers a period of famine.
As you can imagine this would be a bad situation for a bodybuilder who is busting their butt day in and day out at the gym. The idea of a cheat meal or cheat day was to bypass this problem and offer a temporary solution until the contest was over. Not only could you periodically “come up for air” as most normal people need to do once in a while when they are on a strict diet but there was also some anecdotal evidence that it was easier to maintain muscle and energy levels. The upside is you could do all that while paying little or no long term price as far as body fat was concerned.
Not a bad deal, huh. It sure beats the hell out of nothing but rice and tilapia for 16 weeks.
But then a problem developed.
Enter the Porn Star Mustache
Very few of you know this, but before “Body for Life” there was another Bill Phillips that was known amongst those in the bodybuilding community. It was the porn star mustache, Zubaz (Dare to be different, and we mean really different like in take the short bus to school different) pants wearing, steroid newsletter publishing guy (Yes you read that last one right. The Hero of the modern fitness movement Mr. I shave my forearms Bill Phillips used to publish a steroid newsletter).
If there was one thing that made Bill Phillips a genius was that he wasn’t one and that he was smart enough to surround himself with people who knew a hell of a lot more about things than he did. Guys like TC Luoma, Charles Poliquin, Charles Staley, Dan Duchaine (R.I.P.), and Scott Connelly might not be household names but they did form the brain trust behind what Bill Phillips turned into a publishing and supplement empire.
Problem was that in the interest of either extreme self-absorption, simple error or an undying need to “know what his targeted audience wanted” Mr. Phillips wouldn’t always get things right. He would move away from the source of the information and instead go with his own interpretation of it.
Bad idea.
When Body for Life came out one of the biggest selling points was not the generic exercise program, the mental strategies, nor the fact that you got to grunt “body for life” after each rep. It was the cheat day in which you got to eat whatever you wanted for one day a week.
Really bad idea.
Why you may ask. Why can’t you have your cake and eat it too? The reason is this. If the average person was to start incorporating a cheat day into their diet over the long term they wouldn’t get leaner, they would get fatter.
Try to remember where the idea of the cheat day even came from. Elite level bodybuilders who worked incredibly hard for years on end and maintained incredibly low levels of body fat. There is a big difference between how one of those people metabolizes say an entire pizza and the average gym goer who is sitting on the leg extension while simultaneously pounding a sugar laden sports drink in an air conditioned room.
My internet friend, Mufasa (yes that is the beauty of the internet where I can be friends with a fictional lion) explains it best when he uses the hot pan analogy. You take the average person and think of their metabolism (roughly a definition of your body’s ability to burn calories) like a pan sitting on the stove top but the problem is the stove top isn’t even turned on. Now say your pour some oil (i.e. fat) into that pan what is going to happen? Barring an invasion of ants that oil is going to sit there an awfully long time.
Now take a high level bodybuilder or athlete and think of that pan sitting on the oven again but instead of the stove top being off it is turned up really high. And when I say really high I mean all the way and it has been that way for hours on end. Your pour the oil in that sucker and it short of a grease fire that oil is going to burn up and turn to smoke right away.
That is basically what happens when you (the average person) eat a cookie versus when a really fit person eats a cookie. One person just stores the calories and becomes more lovably chubby while the other uses it to stoke their body into becoming leaner and meaner.
So what is the solution? The solution is you most likely have no business having the awesomeness that is baked ziti pizza in the near future. If you do then suck it up because you will probably be wearing that thing on your hips for the near future. The key when it comes to cheat meals and cheat days is to understand the context from which they are being used. The odds are you are doing more to enjoy your life by eating that snickers ice cream bar with friends then you are doing anything to benefit your metabolism.
Don’t buy into what hype, your wishes or bestselling books (which are really nothing more than cult phenomenon anyway) tell you. If you want to have “junk food” just understand that for the average person there is no way in hell you are not going to pay a price for it which only reinforces the importance of moderation and portion control.
Or don’t and be fat. What the hell do I know?
Yours in chocolate chip cookies.
Mike Cruickshank
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